My main competitor has been de-Googled

[Ian J]

My main competitor in terms of Google ranking is the factoring subsidiary of Lloyds TSB who spend what looks like a small fortune on SEO and they have managed to hold on to the top spot on Google since before the dawning of time.

I check the page rankings every morning and to my surprise alexlawrie.com has completely disappeared and Google appears to have delisted it completely as a request for site information returns "Sorry, no information is available for the URL" and according to my Toolbar the Page Rank has gobe from 5 to 0

Whilst I am pleased to see the back of them I would like to know what they have done to upset the might Google even if just to make sure that I don't do the same thing myself.

[peterjhale]

I would hazzard a guess that they have a dup content penalty

If you type in the web address w/out the www it doesn't redirect to the full URL with the www

So google probably had the site listed twice

It's a big problem. They can solve it with a simple 301 redirect

On the other hand there is an update going on with google at the moment and the forums suggest they have devalued reciprocal links in a big way.

[Enigma121]

Of course by asking the question and getting a sensible answer you have possibly helped your competitor out...

Chances are this thread will also get indexed by Google and in the event that they search for their own name they may well find the thread. This will immediately explain why they have been delisted, and they'll take action to get their place back.

I find it's best not to worry about what the competition are doing too much (or keep quiet about it even if you do).

I have the opposite problem to these guys, I've been doing a lot of white hat SEO stuff and Google's slow updates mean I don't see the benefit yet (e.g. our Pagerank is zero when it really should be 3). Now with MSN of course that's a different matter. Try a search for "ebusiness UK" for example.

[Ian J]

Originally Posted by Enigma121

Now with MSN of course that's a different matter.

Two weeks ago I launched a new website onto an unsuspecting world on a Sunday as I thought that long term I could rank higher for the term "asset finance" if the domain included the term and by the end of that week http://www.assetfinance-uk.co.uk ranked in second place for that search term on MSN.

Unfortunately judging by my website stats Google still provides over 90% of all of my visitors with MSN and yahoo and the others providing the rest.

I take your point about providing my competitor with links and have now edited my original post

[I, Brian]

First thought is a 302 issue - there have been quite a few instances of websites disappearing because Google cannot properly handle 302 redirects.

Either way, my personal suggestion is to focus on your own site and not your competitor - look at what other people are doing, sure, but keep focussed on having a quality site that converts well, IMO.

[Ian J]

I have been on page one of Google for the search term "factoring" since I started checking using WEB CEO in July 2004 and have been in the top two all of this year.

I don't know what happened this weekend but I have now been relegated to position 14 which is the fourth one down on page 2 which I doubt will generate any business at all for me without the benefit of expensive back up advertising.

Pole position is now held by a page on factoring from the Business Link site with the second place being one of the dreaded affiliate quoting schemes.

Since I last checked on 3rd October I have fallen heavily on less common search phrases too including "factoring company" from 3rd to 49th, whilst "factoring companies" "debt factoring" factoring advice" and "factoring invoices" have disappeared from the top 100 from respectively 21st, 12th, 3rd and 19th

Help

[peterjhale]

there's a big change happening at the big G at the moment

some believe it's a recriprocal link devaluation - ie: if your website rankings are built on foundations of recriprocal links, then these links are worthless.

[Ian J]

I do have quite a few reciprocal links but I think that Google only counts certain links ( probably those from pages above a certain PR ). I have just checked and they are showing 164 links to my index page of which by far the biggest chunk are either from here or internal pages on my own site.

I have another site which was optimized for the phrase "factoring quote" and until this weekend it was second place on Google for that term. The site has now disappeared from the first 10 pages but to add insult to injury the link to the site from forum member MikeH's site is on the fifth page of results along with a link from another site.

It's an odd situation where Google returns links to my site before it returns my site itself for a search term.

[peterjhale]

this has happened for a long time

If I added a thread here called "asset finance" I should image the page would rank highly even if you put your link on it

Teneric is currently a trusted site so inside pages rank well

It's best NOT to do a link check on google because, as you have found out, they only show you a sample

check it on MSN to see the real total # of links

Links from forums, link partners, non themed partners, just a link and no text, are generally of poor value -- you won't get a penalty, they are probably just worth zero

[inbakumar]

Originally Posted by Ian J

I don't know what happened this weekend but I have now been relegated to position 14 which is the fourth one down on page 2 which I doubt will generate any business at all for me without the benefit of expensive back up advertising.

Since I last checked on 3rd October I have fallen heavily on less common search phrases too including "factoring company" from 3rd to 49th, whilst "factoring companies" "debt factoring" factoring advice" and "factoring invoices" have disappeared from the top 100 from respectively 21st, 12th, 3rd and 19th

Ian,

I fully understand how you feel at the moment.

It has happended to our site too. We were doing alright until yesterday for our main keywords combination "property development finance" for which we were ranked 7th. Now we are occupying anything between 37 to 75th depending on where you search from. The fluctuations suggest to us that the search engine is in a flux at present, which means we should do very little until it settles down. Hopefully, it is only a 'storm in a tea cup' and would soon pass.

As for Peter's reciprocal linking explanation, I doubt it is the cause. As far as our site is concerned, there were only two reciprocal linking partners for our site (we found out this morning one is not linking to us anyway ).

One common factor we have with your site is the signature links from forum postings here. I hope not this forum is disliked by the search engine for some reason. Peter, could you please investigate this connection for us?

Unfortunately, I am not technical as you guys but I have been told that nothing has been done to our web site other than a few pages being added to it, and links from forum postings in the last few months.

Regards,

Joel